The invention relates to a method and apparatus for sorting and stacking conductor plates tested in a conductor plate tester.
In the manufacture of electronic circuits, components are often inserted into conductor plates and soldered there, so that a finished electronic circuit is obtained. The conductor plate used for this purpose must be tested for faults, for example, for interruptions of the conductor paths and for faulty insulation between the individual conductor paths, as well as for an offset between the contact holes and contact eyes, and the faulty conductor plates must be sorted out. For this purpose, conductor plate testers are used in which conductor plates are fed from a stockpile into the tester proper, are examined there, and then sorted in accordance with the faults determined there.
With one known conductor plate tester, the tested faultless conductor plates are sent into a magazine so that the first-tested conductor plates have the following conductor plates piled up on top of them. When such a magazine is filled, the testing process of the machine must be interrupted in order to insert a new magazine. Such as interruption causes delays and is therefore undesirable.
In another known conductor plate tester, the tested conductor plates are thrown successively into containers in which they then lie without order on top of each other. The conductor plates must subsequently be placed in order and aligned in an additional operational step which also requires the expenditure of time and additional apparatus.
It is an object of the invention to sort and stack tested conductor plates from a conductor plate tester in such a way that the tested conductor plates can be continuously stacked and removed, and also so that the testing process need not be interrupted for a magazine exchange, while at the same time no additional operational step is needed for aligning the conductor plates or placing them in order.